Living Frugally with Thousands in Student Loan Debt on 1 Income....

I am both grateful and frustrated with being a stay-at-home mom.  I am grateful because I am the one raising my son along with my husband and not someone else.  I get to watch him grow into a smart, compassionate person.  I have been able to watch him crawl and walk for the first time and teach him the alphabet and numbers.  Being home with my son has been one of the greatest adventures of my life so far.

But...yes there is a but.

Between my husband and myself, we have many thousands of dollars in student loan debt.  With my husband being the only one with a steady income, I find myself frustrated that I am not directly contributing to paying down our loans.  I know I am contributing financially in other ways.  Daycare is expensive and essentially I am free daycare.  I am the one who balances our checkbook and keeps us on the straight and narrow as far as spending goes.  Despite this I have the occasional freak out moment, probably once a month and my gracious husband talks be down from the ledge.  We talk about our situation often, and have come up with 6 ways to alleviate any anxiety about money that help for the most part (except for my once a month freak out.)

The Pollington/Pratola Household Money System:

1) Create a year long budget on an excel spreadsheet and stick to it.  This is harder than it might seem but with living frugally in mind, it can be done.

2) Create a monthly budget using and excel spreadsheet.  This tends to be more detailed than the year long budget and includes how much money we can spend on food, gas, miscellaneous...  We currently have a $350 food budget each month which includes going out to eat.  Being that we live in a town with only two restaurants and one has very strange hours, we don't go out to eat much.  Like VB stated in one of her recent posts, eating at home saves a lot of money and is healthier too. :)

3) We have a savings account, but right now we are using it as a savings for our quarterly taxes.  Yes, we pay our taxes quarterly and since we only have one income, we put the money we need for them into our savings and then transfer the money over when we have to pay them.  So right now, we don't have a savings that we don't touch and let the money accrue.  We are working on figuring that one out still and it will probably take a while.  But we do have a savings account for when we are actually able to start saving money.  Many people don't even have that, so I think we are heading in the right direction.

4) Weekly checkbook balancing.  I balance our checkbook once a week so then we always know what we have in our account.  Not only does it ease my mind that we aren't spending more than we have, but it makes me an active participant in our finances.

5) If we use our credit card, we pay it off right away.  We use our credit card for things that Jason can be reimbursed for through the church so once we get the reimbursement money, we pay our credit card off right away.  It just makes sense and makes both of us feel better about life.

6) Breathe and be grateful for what we do have, which unfortunately is a lot more than many people have these days.  We might not have a lot of money, we might not have all the new gadgets or the newest vehicles, but we have a warm place to live, clothes on our backs, good healthcare, food in our bellies and wonderful family and friends.

So yeah, I still freak out about our student loan debt and our small household income from time to time, but these 6 things, especially the last one have been extremely helpful for us, our marriage and our family.  I hope they help you too.